A healthcare watchdog group is demanding that Johns Hopkins Medicine eliminate its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program after its boss created a “toxic culture” by declaring all white people, Christians and men as “privileged.”
Do No Harm condemned the elite institution’s “empty” apology after Dr. Sherita Hill Golden, chief diversity officer for the hospital system, sent a staff-wide memo last week defining privilege as “a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group.”
“Johns Hopkins needs to completely eliminate their DEI department and channel those resources toward the primary objective of preparing the next generation of healthcare professionals to give the highest quality care to all patients,” Kristina Rasmussen, executive director of Do No Harm, told The Post.
“They have created a toxic culture rooted in a DEI ideology that demonizes and indoctrinates the very students they’re tasked with training to become the next generation of medical professionals.”
“Their weak apology is simply insufficient, and our campaign is focused on raising awareness about the discriminatory ideas being taught to students and the hostile workplace imposed on employees.”
The group — which is “focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice” — also deployed a mobile billboard in DC Thursday in protest of the DEI program.
“Racism is still racism when a DEI officer says it,” the poster, plastered alongside Golden’s face and The Post’s original reporting, says.
The mobile billboard will spend Thursday driving around Johns Hopkins’s Baltimore campus and hospital, the group said.
The school drew national ire last week after Golden sent a “monthly diversity digest” email to staff outlining the limited definition of privilege, which she claimed operates on “personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels.”
White people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle- or owning-class people, middle-aged people and English-speaking people were among the privileged social groups listed in the letter.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Former President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr — both white, cisgender and English-speaking males — were among those who blasted the memo.
Golden retracted her definition of privilege and issued an apology to staff after the backlash.
“The newsletter included a definition of the word privilege which, upon reflection, I deeply regret,” she wrote in a memo. “The intent of the newsletter is to inform and support an inclusive community at Hopkins, but the language of this definition clearly did not meet that goal.
“In fact, because it was overly simplistic and poorly worded, it had the opposite effect,” she continued. “I retract and disavow the definition I shared and I am sorry.”
The apology was not sincere, Do No Harm argued, adding that dismantling the DEI program was the only way to correct the misstep.
The group pointed to Golden’s far-reaching influence, including her second position as the head of DEI for the American Society of Clinical Investigation, which offers a post-BA scholarship program available only to students who are “underrepresented in medicine and science.”
The Post left a message with Johns Hopkins.
